Period 27: Make-Believe Sisters
'Make-Believe Sisters '''is the twenty-seventh chapter of the Zekkyou Gakkyuu series and 3rd chapter in the volume 7 manga. Premise ''Tired of her spoiled little sister, Haru makes a wish on a shooting star and suddenly finds herself in her body! At first it seems like a dream come true, but after realizing what Mina is capable of doing in this new body she finds herself in danger. '' Yomi's Introduction Yomi directs the readers to a pair of siblings nearby in the middle of playing house. She notices how unhappy the older sister looks, but asks that the reader continues to watch them. Summary While waiting for their mother to get home, Haru angrily yells at her sister -currently in the middle of a tantrum- to try to quiet her down. Mina continues to bawl, until Haru overhears the news reporter bring up a sad story of a woman who abused her infant daughter to death because she wouldn't stop crying. This inspires Haru, and she picks up a little toy knife from a food set and threatens to ''punish Mina if she doesn't stop; although Mina doesn't appear to understand. As Haru remarks on how boring she is, their mother arrives home and the girls excitedly run over to greet her. Haru tries to tell her about the golden award she got in photography at school, but her mother is too busy and she heads to the kitchen. She has to get started making stew, Mina's favorite dinner- despite how much Haru hates it, and asks Haru to clean the toys off of the floor. Haru demands an explanation for why she should have to clean Mina's toys up, but her mother attempts to reason with her by pointing out that she's the older sibling and she was also playing as she disappears into another room to get Mina cleaned up. Haru angrily watches them while grabbing the various toys as she thinks about how spoiled her little sister is and how unfairly treated she is now. When she was younger her mother made her clean up her toys or else she threatened to throw them away. Once again finding inspiration, Haru picks up a doll of Mina's and walks into the nearby room, threatening to throw it away while holding it out of the opened window. This causes Mina to cry again as they return, and her mother slaps her while scolding her for being so cruel. Embarrassed and further upset, Haru storms off for her bedroom while mentally making a wish that someone could help her escape this as she crawls into her bed. She observes the starry evening sky and pleadingly asks that even if it was for a single day, she wanted to be the one who got attention. Thinking over how poorly things are for herself, Haru continues to cry before hiding beneath her blanket. The following day Haru listens as her mother yells for her to get up, telling her not to stay in bed all day even if it is winter break. But she isn't surprised when her mother is more gentle with Mina and threatens to tickle her awake. Haru refuses to get up though, still in a bad mood. Just then, she is startled when she realizes she isn't in her bedroom as her mother approaches, and she hurriedly looks to see that she has suddenly become Mina. While trying to determine what happened, Haru and her mother hear crying from the nearby room and get up to find "Haru" on the floor in tears having wet herself. As her mother tries to figure out what happened and calm her down, Haru can only stare in shock as it dons on her that they must have swapped bodies. They are joined by their father, who is hurriedly getting ready for work and asks what happened. To Haru's delight, her parents quickly begin to spoil her with affection; such as making a cutesy breakfast for her, and wanting to spend time with her. Her father even asks if he take Mina somewhere- until being reminded of work. He asks his wife to reconsider and explains that he doesn't get a chance to talk to Mina very often, as by the time he returns home she's already in bed. While Haru continues enjoying breakfast, she wonders if this happens every day. Meanwhile, a suspicious Mina hides behind the nearby corner of the room and observes them. After seeing her, her mother asks if she threw her dirtied shorts into the wash, but Mina attempts to tell them what happened, saying there are "two Mii". Her parents don't believe her though, assuming it's only Haru making a silly joke. With that her mother bluntly tells her to stop and eat breakfast and their father takes off. A bit later, their mother takes off for work, leaving "Haru" in charge of Mina as neither of them have school. As Haru attempts to figure out what to do, she finds Mina, distressed and feeling lonely sniffling at the corner of the room. While she isn't interested in helping her, she decides to be nice and offers to play house with Mina, as they often play. Delighted, Mina perks right up and agrees at the chance of getting to play mommy while Haru acts as the baby. However, Haru decides to imitate Mina's own childish behavior by throwing a tantrum as a way of getting her to see how she acts; but her plan backfires her when after Mina scolds her, she spots the kitchen knife nearby. She picks it up saying the bad kid ''must be chopped up- just as Haru did the prior night, and she panics remembering this as she sees how serious Mina is being. She is grabbed by Mina and unable to pull away due to their differences in strength. Suddenly, their mother returns and hits "Haru" hard enough to send her to the floor and drop the knife before hurriedly checking on Haru to make sure she isn't hurt. She begins to yell at the shocked Mina -who has never been hit before- and wonders if she did something to cause this. Grief-stricken over the event, she stays home from work and waits for her husband to return home. Haru is ashamed of what her influence had done, feeling horrible that her mother would be this upset. She rushes into another room to pull out a photo album she often looked at and began to observe the pictures within it- all of them herself during her first year of birth at home. In this time, she comes to the conclusion that she had forgotten how much she was loved as a child. Meanwhile, Mina, now in Haru's room continues to cry as Haru nervously thinks about what ''would have happened had their mom not shown up when she did. She is suddenly joined by her, who embraces her and mentions that she forgot something earlier. She returns to her husband to speak about what happened, unable to understand why Haru would even think of doing something so violent to Mina. He reminds her that Haru was behaving oddly that morning as well though, and recalls an earlier conversation he had with a neighbor when he left for work the prior day. They brought up that Haru's picture was being up at the district hall and he was caught off guard, unaware of this as he wasn't told. He didn't mention it that morning though as he had to get to work. Unable to sleep, Haru listens in on her parents from Mina's room. As they wonder if Haru is acting out due to feeling lonely, she remains silent, feeling even worse for what this did to cause her mother so much pain. She doesn't want to see that happen again and decides to reconcile and apologize the following morning when she changes back. With nothing left to do until then, Haru forces herself to go to bed. A few hours later, Haru is suddenly woken up to see someone is carrying her. She is alarmed, realizing that it's still night time and sees that it is Mina carrying her down the hallway. Trying to snap out of her sleep-induced daze, Haru tries to call for help as they approach their parents room; only for Mina to shove wadded up tissue in her mouth so she can't. She leads Haru to the same window where she had threatened to throw out her doll the prior evening, repeating Haru's words from then. If Haru will throw out things Mina doesn't want or like anymore, then she will get rid of Haru- who she doesn't want or like. Haru panics at the idea, realizing that they are seven stories up from the ground and she couldn't survive a fall from that height. She mentally cries for help as Mina approaches the fence surrounding the small balcony and holds her over it. Just then, Haru falls down and to her shock she sees that she has returned to her old body. She is delighted to see that morning is approaching now and she was right in that her wish only lasted a day- but her joy is short lived when her mothers scream alerts her to something else, and she looks up in time to see Mina fall to her death. Later the same day, a family is shown watching a report of the incident. The reporter explains that Mina was discovered being dropped from the seventh story window and she died on contact. When her body was taken to be collected they were shocked to find it in several pieces, and as a result of this, an investigation is in progress out of suspicion that she was abused. The mother of the family can only sigh as she finishes dinner and prepares the table, remarking on how glad she is knowing her family leads a peaceful life. She remains blissfully unaware of her youngest son's anxiety sitting next to his older brother, bandaged and injured. Yomi's Epilogue As Yomi walks by this families window she remarks on how its hard to tell what a family is really like by what can be seen from the outside. She asks the Readers if their families are okay and recommends that they wish on a star if they aren't satisfied- although she warns them that their luck that will determine if they are happy or not. Characters *Haru Okamoto *Mina Okamoto *Mrs. Okamoto *Mr. Okamoto Quotes Trivia Gallery Category:Manga Category:Vol 7 Category:Chapters